Category: Reading

• Loneliness is pervasive and a key reason to “other”
• We need to get reconnected
• Isolation turns something dangerous into something deadly
• Loneliness drives obesity and other chronic diseases
• Much of depression is simply a lack of community
• The phrase “our kids” used to mean “the community” but now it is usually limited to immediate relatives
• Having a shoulder on the road gives more margin for correction
• “How we ought to live” is often a moral question
• In the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s we liberalized our laws at the push of the affluent
  • The affluent then realized this not a recipe for success and have become more conservative in living
• ATMs scared tellers thinking there would be no need for humans tellers; instead, they boosted the number of tellers because branches became cheaper to run
• We are meant to be “for” things, in absence of that we will be “against” things in order to keep a community
• News shifts to fit the delivery mechanism (‘You can’t use a smoke signal to share philosophy’)
• Retired people watch an average of 50 hours of TV a week
• “Nut picking” is searching for a “nut job” who can be broadly applied to a stereotype
• Naming the enemy limits what the they can do in our minds
• We set the agenda for the news outlets
• Part of public service is to head home once you are done
• “Money is power stored in the bank.”
• “Limited government” is not the same as “small government”
  • Limited in that the government should be constrained to enable citizen thought
• Use technology when it advance specific ends

Prenote: This was an audiobook of this title with speakers poorly identified. I have noted speaks as best I could determine.

• John Maxwell
  • Level 1, positional
    • People follow you because they have to
    • People do the least amount of energy and effort
    • The office is packed up at 430
  • Level 2, permission
    • They follow you because they like you
    • It is hard to influence someone you antagonize
    • Listen well
    • Observe what their people do
    • Learn
  • Level 3, results
    • Start producing
    • People do what they see
    • Be a tour guide, not a travel agent
    • “We attract who we are, not who we want”
    • Momentum solves problems
  • Level 4, people
    • Recruitment
    • Position
    • Equip
      • I do it
      • I do it with you
      • You do it with me
      • You do it
      • You do it with someone else
    • Successful leader find what other people are good at
  • Level 5, respect
    • Follow because they respect you
    • You will be at different levels with different people
    • Different levels will hear the same thing differently
• Simon Sinek
  • Golden Circle
    • How we work
    • Why we do it
    • What we do
  • People care why you do it, not what you do
  • Trust and feelings come from limbic system, detached from language
• Laura Sicola
  • Appearance
  • Communicating skills
  • Gravitas
  • Credibility issues when claims and evidence are disconnected
  • Don’t wing the delivery
  • “Vocal executive presence”
  • We focus on high pitch tones, and then fill in the lower pitches
  • Go up on the first name, pause, then go down on the last night

• Authorities are not leaders
• People who feel safe are willing to sacrifice
• Roselinde Torres
  • Here are trends that affect me; Here are trends that affect those around me
• Speech writing
  • Mirror hyperventilating
  • Group in three (tricolon)
  • If the sentence is balanced, then we assume the underlying logic is balanced
  • Metaphors
  • People are more likely to believe something if it rhymes
    • “‘I’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’” is only correct for 40 words but is wrong for 900 words
• Malcom Gladwell
  • Endorphins mask pain
  • Dopamine is a reward for getting stuff done
  • Serotonin is for leadership; this comes with public recognition
  • Oxytocin is feeling safe
    • Comes through touch
    • Doing nice things for others
  • Alphas need to sacrifice themselves for others
  • Email is good for sending information
  • Emotional questions should have personal communications
  • Cortisol is stress and anxiety
    • Shuts down other systems like nail growth and immune systems

• Be aware of incoming threats and changes
• Openness to experiences
• Believe that you can change
• Beware of fallacies
• We need to be familiar with various patterns so we can be reminded of them later
• Be aware of predictable but unseen issues (information s available but not connected)
• Use a causal loop to understand systems
• Level-shifting (“cloud-to-ground thinkers”)
• Leaders succeed based on the stories they can build around their visions
• “It’s not who you know but who knows you”

Prenotes:

1. The DSM is changing over time
2. Mental health is seeking to be normalized
   • I have a misremembered quote that I heard around the launch of the DSM-5.
     • Statement: “With these changes, almost half the population would have had a mental illness.”
     • Response: “We define physical sickness such that 90% of the population has been affected at some point in their lives, but that does not surprise us.”
3. Autism itself is undergoing some radical transformations as the community grows.

• “Person-first” (“a person with diabetes” vs “a diabetic person”)
• Symptoms must be present in childhood but may mature or change over time
• Lack of reciprocity in conversation
• Struggle with empathic empathy (extrapolating how others feel) but not with affective (feeling deeply for when you see pain)
• Quickly sharing deep, inappropriate information with near acquaintances
• Neural divergent have to use their prefrontal cortex to mask, causing more mental fatigue
• Reading body language is often not consistent and is easy to mask
• “Listen to what we say, not just” what we look like
• “Social motivation” is different from “social energy”
• “Social demands exceed available capacity”
•  Islands of rigidity
• Perhaps it is more about higher/lower reactivity instead of hyper/hypo activity
• Sensors
  • Hearing (including communication and non-communication sounds)
  • Smells
  • Proprioception
  • Vestibular
  • Interoception (“How do you feel?”)
• Autistics tend to have uneven skill distribution
• Autistics tend to meticulously piece together situations instead of using context cues
  • They can focus on the big picture but they default details
  • More intense focus, in general
• Systematizing

• Flavorful foods tend to also be environmentally good food
• Food memories drive a lot of culture
• “Flavor” is now achieved through post-harvest engineering
• 1950’s is when “super markets” cemented their place in society
• We don’t cook in America, we chop
  • (This makes sense; in other cultures, “cooking” is an all-day event where here, it needs to be under an hour)
• Price drove yield
• Shelf-life drove lower nutrition
• Uniformity drove out flavor
• Seasonality is a connection with nature
• Early, peak, late determines sugar and flavor profiles
• There is an inverse relationship between the plant’s ability to convert water into plant… the better it is at converting, the less the flavor
• Focus on flavor over labels
• Organic apples are sprayed with sulfur and copper
• Seek out the produce with character
• Stress improves flavor
  • Cold induces plants to increase their sugar content because sugar water freezes colder than regular water
• Less water is often a good thing
• Grow slow and steady
• “We no longer behave as a local species”
• As we globalize, we are shrinking our varieties of food
• Food transportation carbon footprint is much smaller than production
• What customer want to buy is more important than what you want to sell them
• Citrus is more flavorful, aromatic, and acidic when green
• Ripeness is determined by quickness of use
• The brain is initially energized by bold food but then shifts to wanting diversity
  • We do not tire of bland food nearly as fast as intense foods
• The only nature food that contains proteins, sugars, and fats all at once is breast milk
• Scale is not a bad thing
• We tend to consume whole packages, regardless of size